The research project explores the role of Viennese-American filmmakers in the developing relationship between American and Soviet cinemas from the 1920s to the 1940s. The study focuses primarily on three influential directors whose cross-cultural migrations and shared philosophical interests brought them into extended contact with one another: Erich von Stroheim, Sergei Eisenstein and Josef von Sternberg. Each was born into a dying empire (the Austro-Hungarian and the Russian) and brought a critical social perspective to their work in the nascent cinema of a modern empire (the US and the USSR). By reconstructing and examining the interplay between their personal interactions and the transnational receptions of their films, the project aims to bring out critical historical perspectives on how constructions of identity, gender, sexuality and nationality moved and metamorphosed between Russia, Europe and America in the crucial decades before the Cold War.

Maya Garcia is an independent scholar, artist and translator based in Oakland, California. They graduated from Harvard University in 2023 with a PhD in Slavic Languages and literatures after completing an interdisciplinary dissertation The Queer Legacy of Ivan the Terrible. For this dissertation, Garcia spent extensive time in Russian archives examining the creation and censorship of literary, theatrical and cinematic works depicting the contested sexuality of the first Russian tsar and his favorites. Forced to leave Russia in 2022, Garcia has been developing new approaches to scholarship centering on transnational perspectives. Their main ongoing project is a series of in-depth examinations of cultural exchanges between the US and USSR reflected in the writings of Sergei Eisenstein. In the director’s largely unpublished diaries and notes, they find provocative engagement with concepts of cultural, linguistic, sexual and gender fluidity vitally relevant to contemporary thought.